


Into the Woods

by garyindistress



Category: EXO (Band)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-05
Updated: 2013-02-05
Packaged: 2017-11-28 06:15:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/671215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/garyindistress/pseuds/garyindistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baekhyun was not the best woodworker around, but he was the most popular.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into the Woods

Baekhyun was not the best woodworker around, but he was the most popular. Children strayed from their mothers and flew to him while he waited in line for Junmyeon’s croissants every morning. “Mr. Byun,” they cried. “Dolly’s nose fell.” Dolly, or Hilda, or Melvin could have been a goat, a hamster, a pig with a curly wire tail. Baekhyun would crouch down until he met the child’s eyes and ask permission for a closer inspection of the broken figurine. Carving gender unspecific toys for the children of the town was his specialty and most favorite hobby, the fragrance of black cherry wood skimming under his fingers as he pried at it with a knife. Every fortnight he pillaged through the forest behind his cabin for new materials, his handy axe strapped to his belt and satchel.

For years he did not take a wife, but nosier villagers claimed that they’d spied a strange man visiting in the winter, a taller and more masculine silhouette disappearing into his home. Baekhyun did not confirm or deny the whispers, and the whispers did not subside. Kris was a nomad he’d met in his younger and firmer years, before he took up the craft. One day on the way to the schoolhouse Baekhyun had found him bleeding against a white pine tree, staining the bark with his injury. He had carried him home and tended to the chest wound for three days and nights. “How should I repay you?” Kris inquired on the fourth night, finally lucid despite the pain. The latest change of gauze had not reddened with fresh blood; the wound had closed. Baekhyun breathed a sigh of relief. He had barely eaten in three days. 

“Tell me a story,” he said. “That is the only compensation I ask for.”

Kris spoke of the world outside the village, of people who looked similar but sounded different. He touched the corner of Baekhyun’s eye and then touched his own eye. Baekhyun’s nose and then his nose. Baekhyun’s mouth and then his own, meeting Baekhyun’s. Showing the difference was so slight where it mattered.

Kris was gone every spring, when it became warm enough to sleep in just a thin undershirt. The ground had not dried from the melting snow. This time he’d left a gift, a stump of cedar on the floor beside the cot and a scribbled note on parchment that read, “If you’re lonely—invent your own company.”

Baekhyun began work at once. He first made the body, and then the legs. Limber legs that stretched too long for a doll, but he was not making it for anyone else. This was a gift, a personal indulgence. He would allow himself this.

He carved in shallow indents for the eyes, painting them as dark as browning fruit. The nose as always, came last. He took care in fashioning lifelike nostrils into the triangular block of wood before gluing it onto the face.

The undertaking had spanned an entire workweek. His stomach growled with impatience as he reached for the bread basket that Junmyeon had hand-delivered earlier. “Better to you than the pigeons,” he had said jovially, before pedaling back up the road. 

The doll was a little awkward. It was only upon taking a step back that he noticed an asymmetry in the eyes and how uncommonly long he’d made its limbs. He took another bite of his roll, which had hardened from the day, and thought to himself how fortunate it was that he hadn’t been commissioned for this sad creation.

“But I am not sad,” said the doll. “I am very handsome, unlike you.”

Baekhyun had not yet swallowed the bread in his throat when he heard the utterance. Bits of bread and spittle spewed forth onto the speaking doll. “E-excuse me?” He cried, as the doll began to stretch out its arms and legs, as though he had awoken from a long slumber.

“I suppose you are not so terrible yourself,” the doll said, winking his newly dried eye at Baekhyun. He seemed to think for a moment before adding, “Master.”

“You look nothing like him,” Baekhyun spat out now, his honesty a consequence of mindless terror. But the doll was not offended. In fact, he seemed delighted.

“That is to be expected, sir,” said the possessed puppet. “I am my own man.”

And so he was. Chanyeol, he called himself as he danced across the table to break off a piece of Baekhyun’s half-eaten roll and placed it between the two fitted pieces of wood that made up his mouth. He clapped them together in an obscene show of chewing and Baekhyun had to look away, at once mortified and embarrassed. What was embarrassing was his secret intrigue.

Chanyeol breathed and followed him around the habit, tugging on the hem of his pant legs, twining his rigid arms around the legs themselves, sometimes preventing him from walking. “Don’t leave me,” he said, teasingly. Baekhyun was only heading to light the fire.

He was deathly afraid of the fire, of course.

The grass greened outside, as spring phased into summer. Chanyeol took to sleeping with Baekhyun, hugging his hard wooden body against his master’s back. He had been growing throughout the months; he was now of human height. 

In another few, he would surpass Baekhyun. When he raised his arm, it grazed the thatched ceiling above. Baekhyun did not realize it until one day he looked up, and Chanyeol’s smile was further away.

“Is this better?” Chanyeol asked, and laughed, lowering his head to Baekhyun’s height. His eyes had taken on a shine that Baekhyun didn’t recall putting there.

Sometimes as he slept he felt the exactness of Chanyeol’s humanity, pressed stiffly into his spine. He didn’t remember creating that either.

It was terrifying. But not for a second that entire summer did he feel alone.

“That’s because I’m here,” Chanyeol said, rolling his eyes. His voice had deepened, too, as though they originated from a faraway place. Baekhyun heard it as a vibration that climbed up his arm, prickling across his skin.

The weather cooled. _In a few months_ , Baekhyun thought, peering out of the window. The idea was disrupted by Chanyeol hugging him from behind. There was a softness in him that hadn’t been there before, or maybe Baekhyun was forgetting.

Inexplicably, one night, Chanyeol kissed him.

Baekhyun pushed him away, wiping at the sweet cedar taste in his mouth, but Chanyeol persisted, leaning in to do it again, and again. Nothing was as it was. Chanyeol’s lips were soft and pliant, following Baekhyun’s lead. 

“I can’t—“ Baekhyun whispered, but he did.

By December they had seen their first snowfall together. The snow piled up over the door, blocking their windows, and the cabin grew too cold to leave.

Outside, the children of the village were distraught. It had been a year since they last saw their favorite woodworker, and Dolly’s, Melvin’s, Hilda’s nose had fallen off again. Rumors were that he had fallen ill, and not of the normal sort. His mind had yielded first, the body would inevitably follow. The grown-ups ceased their babbling at the sign of their children eavesdropping behind the doorway, concern painted anew on their little faces, and placated them with promises of newer and better toys. _There was another woodworker_ , they said, sitting their children on their laps now, _in a village on the other side of the forest, one who went by_ Yifan. The name rolled around on their tongues like an uncertain pebble. They would brave the woods for their children, to commission their happiness, in the spring.

**Author's Note:**

> For Joie. continuing this trend of butchering baekyeol, yeahhhh


End file.
